


Happy birthday, Sam Winchester – please don’t freak out

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Confused Dean, Gen, Sam's Birthday, castiel wants to celebrate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 17:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1787701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Sam's birthday. That happens every year, but for some reason this time Castiel is hell-bent on celebrating it right. Dean pretty much <i>has</i> to pick apart the 'why' of it, 'cause...what the heck, Cas?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy birthday, Sam Winchester – please don’t freak out

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Sto lat, Samie Winchester - nie przestrasz się, proszę](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2620148) by [KittensAndRage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittensAndRage/pseuds/KittensAndRage)



> Written as a Happy Birthday fic for mtxref_fic on the 1_million_words comm. The prompt request was "...perhaps an SPN fic where Castiel is trying to get his angelic mind around birthday customs and Dean explains them to him." 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

“Hey, buddy, I’m not saying it isn’t a kind thought, you know?” Dean put a hand on Castiel’s shoulder as Cas walked slowly in front of him, pushing a cart.

He gave it a shake, trying to wrest Cas’ attention from the grocery shelf.

“It’s….considerate of you. Really. But I gotta say I think…it’s also a very…. _very_ bad, borderline horrible idea.”

“How could it possibly be horrible?” 

Castiel’s hands were wrapped so tightly around the cart handle, his knuckles were white. Typical, Dean thought; only _he_ could get childish glee _and_ performance anxiety from the thought of tossing Sam a tiny, little birthday thing in the bunker, just the three of them.

“Well, for starters – shit happens on our birthdays. Both of our birthdays. Bad shit.”

“And that makes those days different in what way?”

“Okay. But…there’s also this: Sam and me, we don’t do that whole … _festive_ and … _upbeat_ thing. Right? Sam sees us coming at him with a cake full of candles, dishing up ice cream, he’s gonna think there’s something weird and….creepy going on. Like maybe our brains have been hijacked. Well, my brain at least.”

“Ice cream?” Cas stopped flat and Dean almost walked into him. “Why ice cream?”

“I have no idea. It’s …what you do. You buy a cake and ice cream and you give the person a gift. If it’s normal people, the kind with actual friends? Then you have a bunch of ‘em over for the cake and the ice cream and maybe there are games and prizes.”

“Oh!”

Castiel looked his way, blue eyes sparkling, visibly way too excited by that tidbit.

“Uh-uh. No way. No games, Cas, or I swear I’ll put the kibosh on the whole thing.”

Cas’ chin lifted, eyes going cool again, turning to the shelf. Dean had a sneaking feeling he was going to be gotten around on that point, somehow, between now and dinner.

“Should we buy the little candles with the colorful stripes, or the bigger ones that spell out Happy Birthday?” Castiel changed the subject. “Look, there are wax clowns hanging off of each letter. Some of them are happy and some appear…distressed.”

“Negative on the clowns. Sam’s terrified of ‘em.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you don’t even want to say the word around him. Let alone light a bunch of ‘em on fire then plop them down in front of him.”

“Actually, I think he has a point. Clowns are every bit as disturbing as they are funny. Discomfort humor; that’s a clown’s entire job isn’t it? Unsettling people - for a living. How do they sleep at night?”

“That question is way above my pay grade. Just grab a couple of the boxes of the little candles, okay? Let’s motor to the bakery section before it’s dark out.”

“No.” Cas grabbed three boxes of the candles and pushed on. 

“No?”

“We are making the cake ourselves.”

“What in our shared experience, from Earth to Purgatory and back, makes you think you have the ability or I have the patience to make a cake from scratch?”

“Box mix? Canned frosting?” Cas had the puppy eyes on full blast, saying it like such things would be a sacrifice to his overall vision, but that he was proving he was willing to negotiate.

“Fine. Yeah. I guess we have a shot at that coming out halfway decent. Store bought cakes never taste all that good, anyway – they’re prettier, but…”

“Why a _cake_?” Cas hit the consonants on the word so hard, eyes narrowing, that Dean couldn’t help but smile. He walked faster as Cas picked up speed, on a mission now, eyes searching for the ‘baking needs’ aisle. “Why not a …fruit platter? Or crudité? One would think healthy treats would be the obvious choice?”

“I don’t think it’s about celebrating what’s visible from the windshield,” Dean grabbed what they needed, because if they were making a cake it was damn sure gonna be chocolate with chocolate frosting. “I think it’s about all the crap in the rear view bein’ behind you. As in ‘Life’s short, have dessert first.’”

“Ah,” Cas barely paused, aiming them toward the dairy section. “Yes. That makes sense. Plus… it would have been a sacrifice until only recently? Spending money on butter and eggs and sugar….”

“Very true….” 

Dean let it go at that.

He had some questions of his own for Castiel, but they would wait. The grocery aisle wasn’t the place for them.

~*~

“Have you given any thought to the Happy Birthday song?” 

Castiel was frosting the cake as he asked it. Had, in fact, been sitting at the kitchen table for an hour waiting very impatiently for the two halves to cool so he _could_ frost them. 

“Nope. Why?”

Dean was across from him, kicked back, bourbon in hand. They’d had to wait ‘til Sam hit the library to start the whole process – luckily, he tended to get immersed once he was in there, but waiting had put a time pressure on Cas that had clearly stressed him out which both amused and stressed Dean out, too, God only knew why.

They had now reached the point where they had a pretty good shot at getting this done and still keeping it hidden from Sam.

“If you sing it slow, like a dirge… it sounds like an incantation,” Cas said, swirling the frosting on the first half and inspecting the sides. 

“Like you’re singin’ it _at_ someone, not to them?”

“Exactly,” He nodded, setting the second half of the cake on top of the first half and pulling another huge hunk of the frosting out of the can with a silver knife. “I think it’s a protective rite. As in ‘be happy, be well, please, because…’”

“Because I need you,” Dean said and Cas nodded and they were both silent for a moment.

“Cas, why is this so important to you? Sam’s birthday?”

“When you were gone?” Cas said. “The days after you left us at the bridge? Sam…told me something that…. well, it suggested he thinks maybe he’s expendable. Isn’t it time we start showing each other… we’re not?”

“Yeah,” Dean finished his drink in one gulp, reaching for the jar of sprinkles and popping it open in preparation for the final touches. “Maybe it is, babe.”

~*~

The look on Sam’s face when Dean carried the cake and its seventy or so brilliantly glowing candles to the table was something neither he nor Castiel forgot for a while. 

He didn’t look like he thought maybe they’d lost their minds or been hijacked by alien beings. He looked stumped. He looked like he was twelve years old again. And, Dean thought, his own heart hurting; he looked like his might be breaking.

No one sang the dirge, but Castiel said a low, gruff ‘Happy Birthday, Sam.’

Sam looked to his brother, eyes asking if all this was his idea. Dean gave a very quick, sharp shake of his head, chin angling toward Cas.

Sam huffed out a ‘who’d have thunk,’ blinking fast. Then he stood halfway up to breathe in deep and blow out the candles. 

~*~

Cas did sneak in some games. Dean was never sure when he’d managed that, but he did.

Most of them went unopened; both brothers adamantly refused at first, citing their dignity as the reason no. But after a few drinks went by, the ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ got pulled from its wrapper and hung on the wall and…..it all went straight to hell from there. Dean got two pins in the ass, one from each of them because they decided _he_ was the donkey and blindfolds wouldn’t be necessary and…. Sam got birthday punches on his arm from Dean, mostly because of the pins in the ass.

Dean chuckled later, thinking back on it – flat on his belly in bed, perilously close to a case of the bed spins from the last round of shots. 

The whole night had been… awkward, maybe? A little too …vulnerable for his taste. 

But it wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t even bad, it was…..

Good. It had been really good.

A day to tuck away – to remember someday. 

If the stuff in the rearview got to be too painful to deal with.


End file.
